Intercontinental Exchange plans to launch derivatives in battery metals nickel, cobalt and lithium spodumene in London later this year, an executive said on Tuesday… “Our customer base is looking to us to provide products to hedge. Our role is to make sure there’s a broad product suite,” Chris Rhodes, president of ICE Futures Europe, told the FT Global Commodities Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland…“ICE are planning to launch battery raw materials this year, lithium and cobalt and spodumene will be the start of that.”…Exchanges across the globe are seeking to capture strong expected growth in demand for minerals needed for electric vehicles and storage batteries.

South Korea aims to achieve a 20% recycling rate for strategic critical minerals by 2030, as intensifying trade tensions between the US and China expose the country to supply uncertainties…The Asian nation is targeting the recovery of 10 minerals from goods such as discarded batteries and printed circuit boards to assist sectors like semiconductors and electric vehicles, according to a joint statement from the trade and finance ministries on Tuesday. The list includes lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, graphite, and five rare earth elements…The move is part of South Korea’s efforts to reduce its heavy reliance on imports, particularly from China and Chile…China dominates the global recycling market, producing over half of the battery scrap and holding the lion’s share of preprocessing and material recovery capacity. Global companies are trying to chip away at its control as demand for critical minerals escalates.

Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD aims to double its sales outside China to more than 800,000 cars in 2025 and will look to overcome tariffs by assembling cars locally, its chairman told analysts on an earnings call on Tuesday…BYD, which sold 417,204 units overseas in 2024, expects to see "a substantial rise" in its market share in Britain, which is "very open" to competitive Chinese products, according to a transcript of the call by Wang Chuanfu that was reviewed by Reuters…The company also sees "great opportunities" to grow rapidly in Latin American and Southeast Asian countries, where the governments and people are friendly towards Chinese brands, he said…The company will continue building factories overseas without partners as it has abundant funding, Wang added…BYD is currently building a factory in Brazil, its biggest market outside China, although the development was hit last year by allegations of labour abuses. The carmaker is also building factories in Thailand, Hungary and Turkey…In addition, Wang said that BYD had no plans to sell into Canada and the United States in the short term due to geopolitical developments. The Trump administration has maintained duties of 100% on Chinese-made EVs, as has Canada…BYD, which is targeting sales of 5.5 million units this year, has roiled the Chinese auto market by rolling out more affordable models, including its entry-level Seagull electric hatchback that sells for less than $10,000. It also offers smart driving features at no extra charge on most of its lineup.

Energy storage systems (ESS) have emerged as the next golden opportunity for Korean battery makers to target the U.S. market, benefiting from U.S. President Donald Trump's hostile tariff policy against China…ESS demand is soaring predominantly in North America thanks to AI-driven data centers and renewable energy projects like solar and wind power. China, the current dominant player in the ESS market, is facing limited access to the U.S. market with Trump's 45 percent tariff imposed on Chinese batteries and parts…LG Energy Solution, the country's largest battery manufacturer, inked another ESS deal Wednesday with the Taiwan-based Delta Electronics in a pact worth up to an estimated 1 trillion won ($682 million)…The contract includes a supply of roughly 4 gigawatt-hours of residential ESS batteries for five years to the U.S. market, equivalent to the electricity that 400,000 households use over the course of a day…SNE Research predicted that the global ESS market will grow at an annual rate of 35 percent, to reach $80 billion, in 2035.

Witnesses at a US House of Representatives hearing on Tuesday urged Washington to step in to counter what they described as China’s exploitation of corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo…Their testimony comes at the same time as US President Donald Trump’s administration is considering a deal with the Central African nation to combat China’s dominance in the minerals supply chain…Lezhnev told the subcommittee hearing convened by the House Foreign Affairs Committee that “the system of state capture allows ruling elites and their commercial partners to personally profit while leaving the population to suffer”…The US should take steps to stop China’s “illicit exploitation” in the country, he added…DR Congo is by far the world’s biggest source of cobalt, a vital component of the batteries used in electric vehicles and phones, accounting for around 70 per cent of global production…Between 2000 and 2021, Chinese state-owned creditors approved 19 loan commitments worth about US$12.85 billion for cobalt-copper mines in DR Congo, according to AidData, a research lab at the College of William & Mary in Virginia…According to The Wall Street Journal, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi has offered Trump mining opportunities in exchange for a formal security pact…Instead, Smith stressed allegations of abuses committed by Chinese companies in Africa’s mining sector, including environmental degradation and forced labour. He also highlighted a bill that he introduced on Monday seeking to prevent goods made with or containing cobalt refined in China from entering the US.

U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order on boosting domestic minerals production is intended to blast a path through the thicket of mine permitting in the United States…It takes an average of nearly 29 years for a new mine to go from discovery to production in the United States...The Secretary of the Interior is instructed to "prioritize mineral production activities over other types of activities on Federal lands"…But there is a danger that the political pendulum will swing too far the other way. There is also the problem that new mines still take many years to build and the U.S. lacks the processing capacity to convert raw materials to metal…Copper is not on the U.S. critical minerals list but gets a special mention in Trump's executive order…Big mining companies such as Rio Tinto , which owns a majority stake in Resolution, have learnt the hard way that mining without community consent is highly problematic…The Resolution mine has the potential to become the biggest copper producer in North America, capable of meeting up to 25% of the United States' annual copper demand…The copper will come with by-products such as bismuth, indium and tellurium, all of which are on the critical minerals list…Rio's Resolution mine could be integrated into the company's existing Kennecott smelting and refining operations in Utah…Kennecott, however, is only one of two active primary copper smelters in the United States.